


Feral Things

by PrettyArbitrary



Series: Feral Things [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Blood, Captivity, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control, Torture, Violence, Whump, feral 76
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-08-07 13:20:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7716292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talon decides to try repeating their past success with Widowmaker on Soldier: 76.  Much to his own surprise, Reaper discovers he has a problem with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Feral Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tophatlass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tophatlass/gifts).



> This is my ongoing excuse to do terrible things to characters I like. The chapters aren't always in chronological order, nor do I promise that there'll be an overarching plot. You may do better to think of each chapter as a standalone story in a series--but all in one convenient location!
> 
> Thanks to [tophatlass](http://tophatlass.tumblr.com) for the idea that got this started!
> 
> I'll add tags as appropriate for future chapters, so keep an eye on that if you want to avoid unpleasant surprises.

'Mad dog,’ the Talon scientist had said when he explained the project. The contempt in his voice told Reaper enough about what to brace for.

So he’d thought.

"Oh. Jack."

Jack is strapped down spread-eagled to a metal frame. Bolted down, really, with metal restraints at his wrists and ankles, neck, chest, and waist. He's struggled enough that his skin is rubbed raw and bleeding around them. His eyes are glassy. Gabriel recognizes the look. It's one that’s been turned on him many times: the fear that comes beyond any hope of escape.

When they walk in, he fixates on the Talon soldier who follows Gabriel in to lock the door and take up guard near it. Even as Reaper keeps walking toward him, Jack watches that man, anonymous in tactical armor and face shield, with a fixed white-eyed stare and lips peeled back from his teeth.

For some people—many, _most_ —that kind of fear is a paralytic. More victims than Reaper can remember have cowered before him with that expression on their faces, shaking like traumatized rabbits as his claws descended. But a few are wolves. Corner them like that, cut off every avenue of escape, and they'll fight just to take their killer to Hell with them.

Gabriel’s always known which kind Jack is.

He doesn't stop till he's standing next to the frame holding Jack. Jack finally switches attention to him, wide-eyed and growling. It sounds so inhuman that Gabriel wonders about the state of his vocal cords. His body strains against the straps. The ones across his chest and waist seem to be there to keep him from thrashing so hard he chokes himself.

Bands of sickly color wrap around his wrists, throat, upper arms where he battered himself against another set of restraints. Rainbow blotches spread across his body in layers from repeated beatings, along with burn marks—stun batons at a guess—and cuts at various stages of healing. A few suspiciously fresh surgical scars. Gabriel follows one with his eyes, and thinks he'd very much like to know what they went digging around in Jack Morrison's flesh for.

There's a line of drool starting at the corner of Jack's mouth. Gabriel reaches without thinking. Jack snaps at him. Snarls a warning when Gabriel pulls back.

"Hm." Gabriel looks at his own clawed fingers, a bit surprised at himself. When's the last time he minded someone's suffering? When did he start minding Jack’s? Then he looks at Jack, broken and moon-pale, that painfully familiar face engraved and twisted with pain, teeth bared like a wild animal. Braced for the next attack in an endless series of them.

He meets Jack's eyes. They're still the burning sky blue they were when Jack was young, sane and whole.

In his head, the sneering scientist goes on his list.

The guard gasps when Gabriel reaches up to pull off his mask. Gabriel doesn’t so much as glance at him. "Hey, viejito." He reaches again for Jack's face, speaking softly, moving more slowly this time, letting his talons dissolve into smoke. "Hey, Jack, you remember me?" Jack tries to bite him again. Gabriel avoids it deftly and wipes away the streak of drool.

The guard swallows audibly at the disturbing sound of Reaper _crooning_ and glances toward the locked door.

Gabriel lets his smoke waft around Jack's head, in hopes his scent might trigger some familiarity. "Come on, guero, just give me a sign you're in there." He drags the claws of his other hand lightly across a knife scar he left over Jack's hip the day they both died. He’d missed gutting him by inches. "You remember this? Remember when I did this? You gonna let that be the last of it?"

And there it is: recognition flares in Jack’s eyes just before he hurls himself at Gabriel. He moves about a half-inch in his bonds, but it’s the thought that counts. Gabriel laughs to himself, and catches Jack’s chin to hold his tossing head still so he can kiss him on the scar that cuts across his face.

He glances at the now entirely freaked-out guard and points at the table next to him. “Toss me that.”

There's a control collar around Jack's neck, just below the restraint that keeps him from lifting his head. The scientist said the pain of it would drop Jack ‘like a mountain fell on him’ when triggered. The guard picks up the collar’s little control unit from the tray where it was left for Reaper’s convenience, and throws it to him in a light underhanded toss. Gabriel stashes it in a pocket and turns his attention back to his captive.

“Talon gave you to me, Jack, you know that? They’ve got high hopes for you and me.” He combs his fingers through Jack’s sweat-spiked white hair. Jack shudders under the caress, tense and uncertain. It may well be the first kind touch he’s felt since Talon took him. For a criminal organization with world-altering ambitions, they can be real hacks. It’s up to Gabriel to clean up their mess, as usual. “But they can’t imagine, can they, cariño? They have no idea what we are together.”

They’re the men who saved the world, then rebuilt it, and then brought it all crashing down again. Talon wishes it had that kind of pull. In fact that’s probably the reason for this. He pets Jack a few more times, enjoying the way it makes him twitch in wary confusion, then straightens up. Time to get on with things.

“Hey,” he says to the guard as he fits his mask back on. “Were you one of the ones who worked on him?”

It's meant to be a reward. They'd thought Gabriel would enjoy being Jack's master, seeing him brought low and suffering the way Gabriel has suffered.

They're right. He will. 

Talon, though? Not so much.

When he releases the restraints, Jack leaps through his smoky form and straight at the screaming guard. Gabriel leans back against the door to admire the show. The blood doesn’t bother him. It’s why he wears black.


	2. Patching Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt: "maybe Jack gets injured or has some injuries still from their escape. So, reaper has to bandage him up (it does not go well) and at one point Jack bites down hard on reaper's arm. Reaper doesn't hurt him though and that confuses the frick outta Jack."

Jack fights so beautifully. Hanging back to provide suppressing fire, Reaper gets a particularly good show. For all he talked a good game back in the day about ‘peacekeeping’ and ‘better ways,’ he’s always fought with the honed brutality of a killing machine. But Reaper has to give it to Talon: whatever they did to him kicked him up a notch from honed to transported. He kills Talon personnel like he loves the taste of them.

Reaper clears out anyone who gets the bright idea to take them out from a distance, and lets Jack have the rest. He uses whatever’s on hand—being out of his mind hasn’t dented his talent with knives, guns, or thrown objects—but with his strength and speed, his bare hands are a deadly weapon. He cracks joints, rips open bellies, tears out throats. By the time they’ve cleared the base, Jack is literally drenched in blood.

He’s also still naked.

Gabriel stops moving when he realizes this, gets tackled into a bulkhead by a snarling Morrison, and has to turn to smoke to slip out from under him without hurting him.

It’s not that Gabriel personally minds Jack in a state of undress. But it’s going to be a bit goddamn difficult to get away from this base without attracting attention while toting around a naked blood-covered man who’s trying to gut him with his teeth. Equally unattractive is the fight he’ll have on his hands trying to clean Jack up, dress him and drive a fucking car while wrestling an angry super-soldier without crashing them both into a bridge abutment.

Gabriel’s learned a lot of profanities in a lot of languages over the years. He comes up with new and inventive ways to combine them while he stalks off toward the residential wing of the base. 

Then he stalks back because Jack isn’t fucking following him. He finds him half-conscious and shocky in a puddle of blood just outside the door of the labs. “Hijo de la chingada.” 

Some of that blood is coming from a gash down Jack’s side. Someone got a lucky shot in.

He taps the metal knuckles of his gauntlets against his mask. This...could work, actually. 

Jack groggily curls in on himself as Gabriel pulls off his mask and kneels down next to him. “Good boy, Jack,” he purrs, carding a hand through blood-tinted white hair. “This won’t hurt.”

Gabriel cups Jack’s chin and lifts his face to bring their lips together. Jack makes a noise in his throat and flinches away, stopped by the sharp points of Reaper's claws pressing quellingly into the soft curve behind his jaw. 

Gabriel holds him in place but keeps it gentle. Keeps it soft while Jack shakes between his hands, too woozy to fight and waiting for pain. More pain won’t win his loyalty. Once upon a time, Gabriel knew all there was to know about holding Jack Morrison’s loyalty. The drugs in Jack's system leave bittersweet traces in his mouth, and no one's been prioritizing his dental health while they were reprogramming his mind. But he still tastes like Jack, and it makes Gabriel groan even as he inhales the air from Jack's lungs and breathes darkness back into him. 

Jack slumps. A curl of black smoke drifts from his nose as Gabriel gathers him up to sling him over his shoulder and head for a shower in the staff quarters. 

He gives Jack about five minutes and waits outside, because cornering a terrified, injured and exquisitely trained super-soldier in a three by five foot space is a recipe for disaster. When he goes in to pull him back out, it turns out the shower woke him up. There’s an explosion of violence and water, and Gabriel has a blurred sense of fighting a greased wolverine before Jack is past him and moving.

Jesus, that man can run.

Gabriel sighs in resignation and pulls out the collar control. 50 feet down the hallway, Jack arches backward, makes a “HRKGKK” noise and collapses to his knees, twitching.

Gabriel picks up the little pile of bandages, cloth, ointments and butterfly strips he put together and goes over to him. “Goddammit, Morrison, have you noticed you’re injured?” He points to the blood leaking down his side, coming from a long score down the side of his ribs. It’s not likely to kill him in the next hour or so, but Jack’s hardly in any state to clean it.

Jack scrabbles at the floor, trying to get up, but the collar must deliver one hell of a payload, because Gabriel knows exactly how much punishment Jack can take before he’s unable to pull himself together.

“I’m not going to hurt you, pendejo,” Gabriel growls, reaching for him. Maybe he should’ve gone lighter on the tone, because Jack twists like a cobra, wrapping himself around Gabriel’s outstretched arm and torso. His unguarded arm; Gabriel stripped off his gauntlets and coat to deal with Jack. He howls at the teeth that sink into the soft tissue near the inside of his elbow.

“Fantastic,” he hisses. Mother Mary, that hurts. “So now I know you were listening when I taught you to be an asshole in hand-to-hand.”

Jack bites down harder, and shakes his head a bit. Gabriel punches the ground a couple of times in lieu of screaming or punching Jack, and then reaches for the supplies. At least he’s not thrashing around while he’s trying to chew Gabriel’s arm off. Gabriel hisses profanities between his teeth and twists them around a bit till Jack’s more conveniently positioned to have his wound treated.

It’s funny how things come back to you. It’s been years, but Jack’s body in his lap still feels as familiar as ever.

Doing this one-handed is awkward as hell, but less so than pretty much any of the alternatives. Every time Jack looks like he’s thinking of changing tactics, Gabriel tugs away from him and he digs in again. “I’m going to make you pay for this, cabron. Oh, believe me. I’m starting a new list. And between that and me putting you back together enough to function, you are going to owe me your soul, farmboy.”

Reaper ranting aimlessly in a voice that sounds like a crude oil spill catching fire will probably never qualify as soothing to anybody. But maybe they didn’t bother speaking to him much, because Jack doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with being addressed by another human being. More or less. After a bit, he tilts his head so Gabriel can see one confused blue eye peering at him. He can all but see Jack wondering why the hell he hasn’t gotten zapped for this stunt yet. God, please don’t let it be just his imagination that there’s a spark of something like awareness in there.

Once he’s done patching up the wound and gluing Jack back together, Gabriel tickles him on his lower abdomen, just above the line of his pubic hair. Works for cats. Works for Jack. He uncoils like a shot, knocking Gabriel on his side as he kicks off and thumps his back against the other side of the hallway, looking surprised as hell. Gabriel grins at him, for just a second nothing but a guy entertained at the expense of a friend. Jack always was sensitive as hell there.

He stretches a bit to reach the pants he dug out of Talon’s uniform stores and tosses them into Jack’s lap. “You remember what to do with those?” God, please. He _really_ doesn’t want to have to fight with Jack to get him dressed.

Still looking shocked and baffled, Jack fumbles with the clothes and stares at them for a bit. Then at Gabriel. Then at the clothes. Gabriel’s about to give in to despair before he finally scrambles to his feet and moves off down the hall another couple of yards to put them on, still eying Gabriel like he’s planning an ambush.

Gabriel stays put on the floor, watching Jack from the corner of his eye while he turns most of his attention to his own wound. Jack chewed on him like a rawhide strip. They both probably need a course of antibiotics. He’s probably going to get tetanus. Can he still get tetanus? Thank Christ the SEP overcharged their immune systems, because after bathing in the blood of that many Talon operatives, Jack’s probably been exposed to bloodborne diseases that are new to mankind.

Jack buttons the trousers up, backs away a couple more steps on the balls of his feet, like he’s about to run...then hesitates, watching Gabriel tend to the bite marks Jack gave him. In his peripheral vision, Gabriel watches his posture ease from fight-or-flight to mere asskicking-ready.

Jack inches back a little more when Gabriel finally stands up, but Gabriel’s careful to keep his movements smooth, slow and directed anywhere except in Jack’s direction. He collects the heap of medical supplies—they’ll probably need those again—and then just stands there with his arms full.

“Well, viejo? I don’t know if you can understand me, but you can either follow me out of this hellhole or stay here.”

Jack looks him up and down, but doesn’t even look like he’s inclined to move. Gabriel lets his mouth twist. He’s not sure what he expected. He’s not good with this shit, with tolerating people’s weakness. He keeps wanting Jack to just snap out of it and come back to himself, but that’s not going to happen. He knows about torture; he’s done enough of it. Whatever Talon did to Jack is going to leave long-term damage and permanent scars. Eventually Gabriel will have to decide whether he really wants to put in the work it’ll take to get Jack to the point of being useful to him, or if he’d rather wash his hands of it and put a bullet in his head.

And some of that depends on Jack himself: whether there’s enough of him left in there to fight for it, or if it turns out a bullet in the head would be a mercy to the remains of someone who, regardless of how Gabriel feels about him these days, was still his fellow soldier.

But hell, half an hour ago Jack was covered in the blood of his enemies. So Gabriel picks up his mask and gauntlets and starts walking. He’s nearly to the next turn in the corridor when he glances back to see Jack start after him. He smiles behind his mask.


	3. Tag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Gabriel was 12, he got a kitten.
> 
> This is relevant.

When Gabriel was 12, he got a kitten.

Technically he _found_ a kitten. It was crying under a dumpster, sick from something he never did figure out. It was about two months old, not tiny anymore, but the poor little thing had looked and sounded so pitiful that he couldn’t bear to leave it there.

At 12, Gabriel was old enough to understand that alley cats weren’t really tame, but too young for the patience it took to work with them. He’d chased the thing around, trying to pet her and hold her to show her he was friendly. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t go well. The little fuzzball did fall in love with his older sister, though. She always had a way with small scared things. Took the cat with her when she moved away for college.

That saved his sister’s life. She wasn't in LA when the omnics tore up the city. Last time he checked up on her, she was out near Whitefish, doing field biology in Glacier. The cat’s been gone for years; kidney failure when she was 11. She never did warm up to him. 

Meanwhile, Gabriel hasn’t gotten any better with small scared things.

On the bright side, Jack is not in any sense small.

He lunges the moment Gabriel comes in and hits the wall behind him shoulder-first. 

Gabriel sighs and shakes his head, drifting to the other side of the room before he reconstitutes. “You haven’t gotten any brighter, cabron.”

Jack kicks off the wall and comes at him again. Gabriel dodges, weaves, sidesteps and wraiths around the room, muttering endearments and encouragements as he goes, giving way before the whirlwind of Jack’s attacks but not trying to lay a hand of his own on him. He did learn a couple of things from his youthful attempts to have pets.

Jack would genuinely try to kill him if he could catch him. Gabriel can see it in his eyes. He knows what Jack looks like when he legitimately wants someone dead. It’s fair enough; they didn’t exactly end their partnership on good terms, even assuming—and Gabriel does—that there’s enough of Jack in there to remember. Fortunately, having his arm ripped off is only a temporary inconvenience these days.

Although it does hurt like a son of a bitch. He doesn’t try to stop himself from screaming, just poofs into a cloud and skids away, his arm dissolving from Jack’s grip to follow him. Having done some damage does seem to mollify the other man a bit. When Gabriel reforms about 25 feet away, Jack pauses to eye him thoughtfully.

Gabriel cocks his head at him. “What’s going through your mind, viejo?” Jack narrows his eyes at the sound of Gabriel’s voice, but doesn’t come after him. “No lie, I’d give a lot to know.” 

Jack is smart. Anyone who tries to judge him on the feral thing will get themselves dead real fast. He’s still got a human intelligence in there, a sense of tactics and almost a half century of fighting experience in the most savage theaters of war this century has produced. They slaughtered their way out of the Talon lab, killing at almost superhuman speed and with perfect form. Couldn’t happen to a higher class of assholes, as far as Gabriel’s concerned, but it’s been a long damn time since he saw Jack fight that brutally. Then again it’s been a long damn time since he last needed to.

But he hasn’t said a word since Gabriel found him. Gabriel’s begun to wonder if he can.

“You know what pisses me off?” he says, filling the silence since Jack won’t. “You remember Widowmaker? She used to be Amélie Lacroix. Gérard’s Amélie. They turned that sweet woman into a weapon. And she’s perfect, Jack. I’ve worked with her. She’s a flawless, obedient, stone cold killer. They used to be _good_ at the brainwashing gig. And then they get hold of _you_ , and look what they do to you.” He jerks a hand in Jack’s direction, thoughtless with frustration, and has to dash to the side as Jack charges. He floats in wraith form for a bit, letting Jack swat and kick at him till he gets it out of his system. “They try to weaponize someone who’s already a human weapon, and all they manage to do is turn you into a pitbull.”

He shadow steps back to the far side of the room, and waits quietly till Jack spots him again. Jack crouches a little, ready to move—and damn but he can move fast when he wants—but just watching, with the blank expression of a wild animal that’s not sure if it’s been spotted. Maybe he’s just tired, but he seems inclined to stay that way as long as Gabriel doesn’t move first. So Gabriel just leans back against the wall, arms crossed, and keeps talking. “It’s pathetic, you know? You held the souls of an entire generation in your hand. There was a time when you were practically the goddamn Second Coming. Even now you could walk into any press office on the planet, take off your mask and ask to speak to the President, and you’d be in the White House in three hours. Under heavy guard, granted, but she’d listen to you. And yet _this_ is the best thing they can think to do with you.” He shakes his head theatrically. If he’s only entertaining himself, then he may as well play to the crowd. “I can’t work with people like that, Jack. They’re practically sabotaging themselves.”

Jack puts a hand to his face and makes some kind of noise under his breath. Gabriel bolts upright because it sounds almost like, “Jesus Christ.”

But the sudden movement has Jack snarling and streaking forward again. Everything in Gabriel wants to lunge for that little glimpse of whatever he just saw and grab it so tight that it can’t disappear again. It takes an act of will that’s almost physically painful to fade back and turn to mist, instead. Jack’s swing catches nothing but air as Gabriel wraiths under the door and out of the room.

He taps at it with a metal knuckle from the other side. “I’ll bring you you food in a bit, Jack.”

He doesn’t know what the hell Talon did to Jack, but there’s a man in there, still. Gabriel just has to be patient enough to lure him back out.


End file.
